Stevieslaw: A Slightly Different Version
A family member posted this recently. It’s been bothering me all week, as the version of the story I heard differs very slightly in some small details. I might as well give my take here. The early version is in italics.
I recently asked my friends’ little girl what she wanted to be when she grows up. She said she wanted to be President some day. Both of her parents, liberal Democrats, were standing there, so I asked her, ‘If you were President what would be the first thing you would do?’ She replied, ‘I’d give food and houses to all the homeless people.’
Her parents beamed with pride.
“Wow…what a worthy goal.’ I told her, ‘But you don’t have to wait until you’re President to do that. You can come over to my house and mow the lawn, pull weeds, and sweep my yard, and I’ll pay you $50. Then I’ll take you over to the grocery store where the homeless guy hangs out, and you can give him the $50 to use toward food and a new house.
She thought that over for a few seconds, then she looked me straight in the eye and asked, ‘ Why doesn’t the homeless guy come over and do the work, and you can just pay him the $50? ‘
I said, ‘Welcome to the Republican Party.’
Her parents still aren’t speaking to me.
In the version I heard, the guy who needed work done around his house was the only Republican. Call him Joe. The man he found to do the job was not homeless. He was a machinist who lost his job when his union was broken and was hired back at half his former wage. Call him Bill.
Joe was able to get Bill to do the work for $25, although he had always paid $50 in the past, since Bill was down on his luck and needed the work to help support his wife and daughter (the little girl of the earlier version). Since Joe was a compassionate conservative, he only charged Bill a little fee for the use of his equipment—shovel, broom, and shears for $10 for 4 hours. When Joe’s powerful friends found out he had hired someone to do the work around the house, they declared him a “job creator,” and were able to get him a tax break on the $50 value of the job. Joe was able to pocket another $25.
While Bill doesn’t qualify for Medicaid in Joe’s red state, he has applied for food stamps. In fact, some of Joe’s friends are not speaking to him, as they must kick in money for those food stamps. Some have become Democrats.